2013; an End

Scribbles in a random notebook,
from sometime in the fall:

Remember why you are fighting,
why you are here. 

You are here to love this 
City,
and to write. 
As long as you do that,
then the means by which 
you do it are irrelevant.

Even if you live in a tiny room,
and save your pennies to 
afford those drinks,
and work whatever jobs come
up that'll do you no good 
on your Resume,

As long as you love New York
and Write,
Then you are winning the War.

Bring it on, 2014.
I am here.

(Later)

The burn mark on my arm begins to peel. It looks a little like a Superman badge. I don't dress all day. When the dog begins pacing, I simply drape myself in a long winter coat and a knit hat and no one on the street can tell there isn't much underneath. Temperatures have dropped; we walk with hurried steps around the block and he seems as relieved as I when we return.

I spend the evening with a storm in my head: gathering clouds and dark whirlwinds. I write in my journal If I am going to be alone, and poor, and so tragically sad, then at least I want to produce some magic in the process.

The night is lighter after that. The storm arranges itself into decipherable language.

Despair is easier to digest
on paper.

Little Fish

The end of the year, always this pale skin and fading breath. My energy falters; I feel the life recede as surely and as quickly as the tide, and all I can do is stand on the shore and try to hold on as best I can. It will pass. My body falls apart, I sit on the kitchen floor gasping for breath, and there's no telling what lifted lid released the demons. The dog paces anxiously, will not settle until nestled in along my left leg.

For a week, there was silence in this wretched mind of mine. There was peace and ignorant bliss, and I reveled in it like a desert in rain, smiling in all the right places and entertaining the ideas of strangers and futures unknown. But the room is silent now, and the ghosts begin to whisper again in the walls. I will not deny I have missed them: there is comfort in familiarity. But their adoration is cloying, they strangle what little air is left in this room until I am reduced to rubble under their thumb.

This is the life you chose. You were so proud in your disdain of other fates. You eat your words now.

Choke on them as they are going down.

Bells

It is still light when we end up in the East Village: lunch time and nowhere to go but onward. We stumble drunkenly out of the wine bar to the tiki lounge where the drinks are too sweet and into the alphabet bar where it all felt like home. Our clothes are all out of place but the beers are forgiving and you leave your number to the man who looks like Jesus. 

The cabbie speaks of the falafel place on MacDougal and 3rd because it is better than anything else and Should I take you there now? But you are too close to home to change your minds now. The Christmas duck lingers on your tongue while you think of Cairo. 

It is only the means to an end, you yell at him, between sips of PBR and lemon. Don't ever forget why you are doing this, and it will all be worth it. 

The New York night hums in your ear drum. 

You remember. 

Interim

My sister comes to town. The temperature drops 40 degrees in a day, and we hurry our freezing limbs to favorite spots around the City. Christmas day every street is empty except Fifth avenue and the meandering hills of Central Park, where a hundred languages crowd with innumerable iPhones. How many times do they ask me to take their picture? I must look like I will not run off with their camera.

The words amass in scribbled notes and lingering dreams. Every night I go to bed tired, and content.

We make plans for the morning. They will keep, if we will it.

Solstice

On the year's shortest day, the city thaws. I peel off layers of clothes, and the tables outside the  restaurant on the corner are full. She wears a Christmas dress but her legs are bare; we are all confused by the season. Waiting for the elevator, their hallway has that musty, warm scent like the Franklin Street apartment in Brooklyn, and for a moment, the promise of New York washed over me anew. Do you remember that time, when you were so new to the city, you asked if I feared the coming of winter darkness, and I said "Not since coming here". I meant it then, it is years ago now, but I mean it just as much still. Sunset was slow and warm tonight, the red brick buildings on fire around seventh avenue.

I've been tired, so tired lately. I neglect my friendships, my to-do lists, my inner workings as I race to pick up hours and fasten my foothold on these streets. But winter hit its rock bottom today, it is all lighter every day from now on.

I decide the same will hold true for myself.

In Motion

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

The Good Life

Tracy K. Smith

Re:bound

Returning to JFK early on a Monday morning, before dawn has even spread its palette over the Rockaway swamps, when only tired worker bees fill the trains (and me sleeping against a pole), and the remains of a cold snow stretch in icy patches across Leroy Street before the nuns close the school doors, is a sweet, quiet kind of homecoming. I sit on the train again later, composing my work self and I realize I don't have to convince myself to smile. The faces on the train rest, worry, look away but no matter; I am already smiling and unable to stop. Returning to these streets, even if after such a short time apart, is an unexpected honeymoon in my butterflied chest.

The darkness is not gone; I carry no such delusions. But it rests, mute, on a back shelf in a tiny room on little tree-lined Morton Street in the Village, while I ride this train up and down the island, smiling. The darkness will be here still (always), but it is not my next of kin like it used to.

I found something better
to take its place.

Gate

The moon is nearly full, again, so often I see it beam across the mountains and light them in eerie silhouettes. Tonight, with the blanket of snow, they seem to glow. I sit in the steaming water on the back porch, watching the smoke curl off my skin and into the twilight. Expecting epiphany, as always, but receiving only inner calm. I will take it. 

I sit at the gate again, the same gate as not long ago, but how much more my nerves trembled then. The pieces fell into place while I was away: a future stretches into the distance suddenly, where before every road was unimaginable. It paints itself in giddy colors and reassuring patterns. It gives me a foothold, and a spark. 

I am arriving. 

En Reves

(I dreamed last night 

You kissed me

And said

"We must keep this a secret",

And I agreed,

You were right. 

Only,

When I woke,

I saw you'd ask that

Of me

Forever

And it made me

Sad. 

But I didn't want it 

Any less.)

Your Eyes

You missed the snow, she writes, as the inches amass on Manhattan, but it isn't true. The mountains here are full of it. I wake early on the first morning and see pink streaks slide across the slopes and turn into sunlight; it looks freezing. Icicles line the windows, but the horses are still out in the field across the road. I shiver. 

I forget my phone, and it overflows with errands and conversations. A life continues, whether I keep up with it or not. The swelling silence of the West begs me to breathe, to be still; I itch to go back, to get started. There is a life in New York that is aching to be lived. 

It is mine. 

Assess

The warm rains passed and New York City is swept over in a breath of icy air. We go to Houston Street and buy a Christmas tree; it is too big when we get home. Same procedure as every year. We laugh. 

We were living in different countries entirely at the time, she says over coffee in their sunny walk-up in Brooklyn, but then the earthquake hit. And I realized he was the one thing I could not live without. 

I leave their home exhausted from the week and the life, but happy. Perhaps it isn't so difficult, after all. Perhaps when it is right the pieces fall into place on their own, and all you have to do is let them. You will not be afraid, like you thought you would. 

I rode the A all the way to West 4th street, walked the freezing but quiet corridor down Cornelia street to my stoop. Perhaps when it is right, you will know it. 

Crumbles

It's a day of waiting for trains. Hours waste away in the depths of the City, as I stare down into the darkness of the tunnel, hoping for light. Stare long enough at the rails and you will see it; you will imagine it grows with approaching transit. I am tired, so tired now, and I just want to arrive. I entertain the idea of walking in there to meet it but freeze just at the entrance. 

Instead I take unsatisfying breaths that do not fill my lungs like I wish. 

There is never enough air

down here. 

Excerpt

"When you're tired of New York, you're tired of life. 

But I was really only tired of myself."

Before Swine

They text to say they're just up Hudson Street. It's been a day of words and undress; I scramble to make the appropriate adjustments to society. We order another round, and another, even though it's a school night, and the bartender gives us a round on the house because it's Tuesday, and somebody should be getting drunk.

He says You have to know if you are here temporarily or if this is your permanent home, because it will dictate how you live, and I can't begin to decide what kind of life I am leading. I don't have a home at all, I say, but the arguments don't make sense out of context. The bar is another than it used to be, but you fall instantly in love with it and the walk home is so short, even in your stupor.

She is still up when you get home. We sit for hours, poring over her paintings and trying to decipher meaning. I thought I was painting happy childhood memories, she implores, but all you see are abandoned animals despondently slumped in dark corners. Here I thought I wasn't making art, and I wasn't revealing anything. You tell her the same goes for your writing.

You wish it wasn't as transparent
as it always is.

Gratitude, Year III

Do you have the time? he says innocently, but I see in his fidgeting fingers that he is asking something else completely. I'm only riding the J for one stop, but it's the long one across the bridge, so we chat about the holidays, about family and who we are. He stares at me with deep eyes and long lashes, as a brilliant afternoon sun reflects off the Brooklyn navy yard. Are you from New York? I ask, and all he says is I am now. 

The Thanksgiving feast is immense, of course, beautiful and overwhelmingly filling. The child holds every one of our hearts in her chubby hands and is delighted. She runs across the rooftop at sunset, Manhattan spreading out at her feet and I fear she won't remember this was all hers once. They leave early, we continue to get drunk and make light of our gratitudes. I sing until my knees tremble and must spend the whole next day writhing in shame. I only barely made it out of the cab without passing out. But I do not forget the day, what it means.

This year,
to my very core,
I am grateful for New York.
For being back here,
when I thought perhaps
I never would be.
For being able to take
these streets
for granted, again,
and for the fact that I never forget
what a treasure that is.
I am grateful for the beautiful people
who remained here
and welcomed me back,
and for those across the lands
and oceans
who will remain still
when I turn to them
with my broken bones again. 
I am grateful for the words
and souls
and streets
that have not yet given up on me,
even when I already have, myself.

I don't know what I would do without you.
And this year,
I am grateful I don't have to.

Texts

Sometimes it's hard to keep that promise: to stay off the ledge, she says, and I know she means it. Is this what life is, day after day?

The weather warms up again, a monster of a rain storm drags slowly across the state and makes the dog nervous. I go to the store in preparation for the Great Holiday of food, and let myself indulge in mini pointsettias and glitter, as well. It is almost here. The first night I plug the Christmas window lights in, I leave them as I fall asleep. I get up in the middle of the night to turn them off, open the radiator valve.

Perhaps this city can keep me off that bridge, at least for a while.

At least until I figure out if there's anything else that life can be.

With Wind Chill

The temperatures plummet. We sit in the apartment with all the radiators open to no avail: the steam doesn't come on. I shiver down to my wool socks and hooded sweaters. There is still a great space where the window doesn't fully close around the A/C unit. She writes to say the door blew off the restaurant. It is winter.

It occurs to me some days that this life is more questions than answers. That I can look into the eyes of these people I call home, and be more lost than ever. That in the safe arms of their warm laughter I can shiver worse than in the November winds. It was so cold walking home last night I thought I might not make it at all. These things happen.

Today was just as cold. But I had only myself to talk to about it, and I wasn't much paying attention.

That seemed easier.

215th St Blues

A half moon hangs over the city tonight, crystal clear in the black sky and the winds chill you to the bone. The first morsels of snow washed across the island but were gone in the blink of an eye; the dog was not pleased. We sat at a football game at the unknown ends of Manhattan and felt America wash over us in the time outs. Fourteen years ago the Friday night lights meant everything, and you shiver in rememberance. America. Six years ago in Texas everyone knew you did not belong, but oh, how warm the night, how thick the sky with crickets. They crowded around the floodlights; two dollars at the window, and the home team won.

I woke this morning with the viciousness of a dream lingering on my brow. How blurry the vision, until I saw what had been written across your face for ages. The betrayal stung all day. I thought it might go away, eventually. We spent the evening playing games, warming our freezing skin with silly competition, and the dog scowled when I only came home for a minute, to walk him. The company much sweeter than the night was cold. I walked home from the subway station shivering. It is winter now, it just happened.

I'm sorry I made you angry; I didn't mean that. I just woke this morning with such a tragic reminder, and I want you all to feel as wretched as I do. Passing every local stop and itching to get out. Or in, but how unlikely. I picked up a ginkgo leaf on the stoop in my drunken stumble. Bright yellow, as though the greatest beauty appears right as we accept defeat. Right as we give in to death.

The moral of the story
should not
be
that.

Circadian

I have trouble going to sleep lately. I stay up late writing terrible drivel, as the lights of the courtyard go out one by one. Watch the full moon climb across the top of my window. Sleep heavy sleeps at last, dreaming of summer sun and bare skin but I miss my alarm and drag myself heavy out of bed in the late morning. I walked home from 35th street last night and the winter wind is so mild up there amidst the never-fading lights and buffering sky skrapers.

A package came from my mother yesterday: the winter clothes and trinkets that didn't fit in my suitcase when I first arrived. What a treasure trove of a box, a reminder that there was more to me than the few folds of laundry currently placed in my drawers. There is more to me than the few details revealed in a month of New York. We are built of more stories than can fit in a resume, or a first date. I am perpetually proving myself.

Perhaps if I write enough ridiculous pages,
at some point the real story
will show.

If I Go to Sleep

The west village is so quiet at 1:30 am on a Sunday. It sleeps, it waits. I keep my window open and listen to the wind. The clouds turn the night sky into a peach-colored blanket. There's a window across the courtyard where the lights are on. I wonder what they do for a living.

He wrote today to tell me he misses my body, but he is only talking at himself and it doesn't matter what I reply. They go to the bar still, and how I miss it, but that town seems endlessly far away now. It's hard to remember how it felt. It was never quiet at night. 

Things I have loved

I'm allowed

To keep. 

I keep you

close

as ever. 

Nobody needs to know. 

Play List

Thank you, V.

A War

Times Square is garish and cold, for all its glitter; the languages don't fit your city and you look away. Walk too many flights to the top and a tiny theater lies at your feet. Perhaps the show doesn't fill its own shoes but you love the hushed mumbles and spotlights regardless. The moon is nearly full. It makes its way across the night sky as kids run amok in the streets. We build a tab, and for a minute I thought she would cry, but it was all saved at the last minute. Free museum tickets stow away in your back pocket; you thank the city for its graciousness. 

You thank the city for everything. 

The dog barks when you get home. It's only because of the late hour; you thought the bar would have closed by now. The sirens are still up and at 'em. You read old journal entries and smile at youth. But at the core, a kernel of unwavering truth. This was always the one place. He texts in giggles. You take the city to bed. 

Wake with a smile in your heart. 

Smith & 9th

I thought of you today, I couldn't help myself. Something in the cold autumn air, perhaps, the sounds of a waking ciy, it reminded me. Of having the air knocked out of me that night, in the middle of the playground and I couldn't will myself to walk home. You have a way of smiling into the table but not into anyone's eyes. I wonder how fall is treating you. Mine is a dream. 

Perhaps I'm glad you are a million miles away. There's a new air in my lungs now, and oh but it's easy to breathe.

There's a part before the park where the F train runs above ground. In the early morning, when the rails turned, the sunlight streamed through the windows and woke me. It was, perhaps, the best part of this day.

Cold Out There

Bob Dylan on the F train, and the remains of red wine on your lips in the late morning. Send him your book, she said, he's a really good critic.
You have to show it to someone, you know. 

I scribble notes in the underground:

"The days pass in freezing sunshine and late night ramblings; what little money there is slowly builds piles in your corners, and you sleep with hope.

For one, short moment, everything is exactly as you hoped your entire life would be.
You don't know what to do with that.
You decide to smile."

(and the moment I wrote it, I knew it was true.)

Enfin

A day passes in words. All morning I stall and fiddle but it's part of the process. Anyone who can write poetry before noon has us all fooled. (as though what you are writing is poetry, you scoff, but nevermind.) They seep in through unseen channels and fall out of your fingers, the words, when they come. Your computer is too old to keep up, and the keys give up one by one, until you are pounding away to make even the shortest prepositions. Lord knows it still beats writing by hand, because no one would know they story you tell, not even you yourself and what is the point of falling in a forest if ain't nobody there to hear you go?

Soon, too soon, it is well past midnight and the lights across the courtyard are all turned out. You see the shapes of clouds like purplish specters over the brick buildings. The trees have all lost their leaves now, except the gingkos on Leroy Street: they wash the entire street in a bright yellow blanket and play pretend at being their own sunshines. Fashion bloggers delight.

They call from the motherland; Sundays were always the day for catching up. The baby grows, your heart twists in longing, but when they ask you how you are, you say fine, because there aren't words enough for how good they really are.

You failed at every
single
thing you ever hoped for
and dreamed of
except this
one
thing.

And it makes all the difference.

Marathon

He followed a girl to New York once. 
I don't think it ended well.

Do you remember that summer; you kept saying this couldn't be the end and why couldn't you come to the City with me, and I think I must have laughed in your face. I am sorry for that. I would do it again.

I tell her not to take any relationship advice from me. To enjoy his company, whatever comes of it.
I will pick the city
every time.
I am not to be trusted
with hearts. 

Late

As the cab crossed the Manhattan Bridge to Chinatown,
and the skyskrapers of the southern tip shone and glittered
draped by the Brooklyn bridge lights
and the Empire State building to the north
had that white sheen on
visible through every avenue,
and the open windows let in the cool November air
and street sounds
all I could think was

I love this City
so much
it actually
hurts

N 7th and Bedford

The view of the Manhattan skyline is breathtaking. From the bathtub you see the Freedom Tower changing colors like a Times Square spectacle. When she came here as a squatter, there was nothing, you know. Just an empty factory and somebody got locked in on the first night. Everybody wishes they got in before it was clean.

You leave the rickety building at last and the winter wind whips you in the face. You are drunk. Make your way through the Bedford street crowds; another hipster weaving inebriated through the streets, pay no mind. Follow the waves to the L train. You would never see them normally but oh, the Marcy Avenue trains don't run like they should. Blame the storm for your inconvenience. You stare at your feet through the tunnel to keep from throwing up on your neighbor before 3rd avenue. Suddenly deposited at 14th street, you haven't the patience to wait for a connection.

The scent of fried oil at Five Guys as you turn the quaint corner on Barrow, and despite the drunk crowds, despite the trash day piles in the street, you realize: this one moment is worth the ridiculous rent. There is nowhere else you can call Home like this, and your every argument is rendered invalid. Trip on the curb but find your keys at the last minute: this city is not so much the dream as it is the only thing that makes sense. There is nothing rational about it.

You realize it is love.

Nobody Said It Was Easy

The world is built by people like you. They have their dreams all lined up and they will change the way it even revolves on its own axle. They swear they will. And until they do, they will carry on all those menial tasks that no one else can be bothered with because they are not part of any wise career ladder. Most of them will end up carrying that torch forever, of course. Most people will not change the world. They simply keep it running. You will stand there at the end, your withered dream in hand, and wonder what became of all the things you thought you could have.

She writes to say she booked a concert. She found a venue, her list of potentials is long. It is 4 a.m. and she doesn't care that morning brings a Real World and a Real Job. It turns out, this was what she was supposed to be doing all along, but we knew that. This isn't the happy ever after, this is just another depressing reminder. I read Sylvia Plath on the train and hide the cover; it feels like too much of a cliché. You feel more like Bukowski. You begin to fear it shows. Sometimes he smiles in pictures.

You decide not to die, yet.
There must be 

some reason
for all this.

Beyond a smile 

In a picture. 

pome

Tap
tap
tap
the keyboard
keys
fall off
one by one

I am powerless
to save them

as my bank account
dwindles
and winter
draws
near.

Oh, Sandy

My characters fight across the pages. They upend years of dissatisfaction and regret on the other's vulnerable skin and they watch the acid eat away until all that remains of a love is blood and tears. My fingers fly across the keyboard for it, there is something there. But the minute things calm down and the actual story supposedly begins, my mind grows dull. I trudge and struggle across the vast landscape of the White Page, and for every anguished line, I think is this really what I'm meant to be doing? But there isn't an answer to such a question. The stakes are too high.

I know we need to talk about it, she says over beers on a quiet night, but I just don't dare to ask him. It was not the life they had promised each other, but you've always got something to lose, if you gamble.

Perhaps we all live our lives afraid of the answers. It is easy enough to live without question. It is easy enough to live like what if.

Generations

And I stood there, watching, as dad fought with mom to tear her out of the car. So that she couldn't drive off and kill herself. 
I was nine, but it was clear what was going on.
Your father was too young then, I don't think he knows.

The bar was growing quiet, Tuesday night on the soft, tree-lined streets of the Village and no one knew the storm was so close. My aunt sat before me old in her limbs but her words were those of a little girl. All your grandfather can say about that is that it wasn't the only time. 

My roommate tries to put on lunch for me, while I have my hands full with dishes. Her indulgence overwhelms me, feels sticky in its intrusiveness; I have to decline several times before she turns off the stove. You really don't like being mothered, do you? she says, and after four years it's like it's the first time she notices. After 31, it's like I can't get myself to stop.

I went back a few years ago, before she was too ill to remember. I guess I was hoping to hear that she wanted her children, at least. After all those years, she still couldn't so much as say that she loved us. But I guess we knew that already.

We parted ways on Seventh Avenue, as they caught a cab for Brooklyn. I walked down the quiet length of Bedford, overwhelmed with the story and the life.

Saw again how the blood runs so dark in our veins.

Ferried

Another day of sunshine, the little room in the Village shrinks and I must get out. I wander aimlessly down Seventh Avenue, weaving through busy worker bees on impossibly short lunch breaks and regret the lack of sunglasses. Manhattan in October is blissfully warm, kind, it refuses to remember the Storm that passed a year ago. I pass the Tower, it is enormous up close but the empty space from what was before remains. Some things New York refuses instead to forget. 

Battery Park is a mess of renovations, the ground is brown and barren, but the Statue of Liberty still beckons in the distance. I grow restless at the edge of the island, see the orange ferry close in on the dock, and I decide to go. Milling with the scores of tourists who heard about the priceless secret, I find a seat inside where no one stays who hasn't made the trip a hundred times before. Last time I sat here I got a root canal in a suburban haven in the middle of Staten Island, and the memory makes me shake my head. The water is not as brown as I remembered, it is a deep green, reminds me there is an ocean there, within reach. There's a line of planes landing at Newark. 

We pass Ellis Island, its bulbous towers tiny in the distance. Millions and millions of people passed through that one gate. Millions of people who had abandoned their every Safety, their every knowledge of what was life, of what was to come, for the dream that this would be better. Some never made it to the mainland. Most of them never again saw the Homes they had left. We pass the island quickly; despite the midday sun I shiver. 

On the return I end up first on the boat. The seats are strangely empty. The trip is telling me something. 

I can't figure out what it is. 

Monochrome

(My favorite part

of everyday 

is going to bed

in that apartment, 

by the window that faces

the courtyard

and looking out 

over the jagged buildings, the townhouses, the chimneys, the scattered 

lit windows and rustling trees, up to the 

never-dark sky and spotting maybe, just 

maybe, a star. 

It reminds me where I am, 

when I have forgotten. 

It calms

my troubled soul.)

In the Village

The air conditioner still sits in the window. There is no space for it inside, even once winter comes. It fits poorly, cold air rushes across my feet as I sit at the desk. The heat is on in the building; the pipes click, click, click at regular intervals, but I always seem to miss the steam when it comes. Finally I catch a cycle, the valve sputters and creaks and the vent hisses. It smells like dust and Christmas and a hundred New York winters.

In the hallway, a dying fire alarm beeps in echoes. An entire day passes as I disappear into countless wholesome Middle American family blogs, from crafty housewives and young parents creating a happy life for themselves. They make you wonder what life you have made for yourself. They make you question your scorn.

I wouldn't give this up for anything, your roommate says over red wine and acrylic paints. Being an artist is the only thing I ever wanted to be. She gave up the family, the bulging bank account, every sense of normalcy for a cramped West Village apartment with squirrels on the fire escape and making rich people coffee to pay the rent when times get tough. But every day she sits in that studio and creates queer images from her imagination; every day she is free. We are creatives, she says, we don't have a choice, you know.

There's an unease in your gut, but it is not entirely clear what it means. You return to your dusty room, close the browser windows, shake the questions out of your head.

I Wish I Had

There are padlocks on the windows, she says as she sends me a picture of sunset from her bed. The sky is a fiery purple, clouds straining in all directions and twinkling lights from the buildings outside. But there is no beauty in a sunset seen from an inpatient room in the emergency psychiatric ward. There is no rest in the sleep to be had there. How many years we have spent contemplating the looming clouds around us. I run to the ends of the earth to escape them. She is glued to the ground, like in that bad dream where you try to move but cannot, and they engulf her. She reminds me of Sylvia Plath. If only the image didn't end with her head in the oven. The allure of madness lies in abandoning what little hope there was.

My mother smiled. "I knew my baby wasn't like that."
I looked at her. "Like what?"
"Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital."
She paused.
"I knew you'd decide to be all right again."

I long for winter now, for the darkness to descend. I long for the chill to bring the happy people indoors, and leave me alone with my City Streets in the Hudson River winds. That giant trap of sunshine and foliage frivolity, of well-paying jobs and only time left over to spend the paycheck at swank bars because it's the thing to do, it beckons at my every step. I no longer know why I try to avoid it. Perhaps I don't, either.

"I'm writing a novel, I said. I haven't got time to change out of this and into that."

Fall

The air smells
of pumpkin spice
and chill
The yellowing birch leaves
outside my window
begin to twirl away
in the breeze
and the waning moon
climbs its solitary gait
over the courtyard's buildings

I sleep a heavy sleep
dream of holiday magic

amidst withering dreams.

Look Pretty

The neighborhood looks so different now, a whole city appeared across the river and is creating a scene, but everything is new, everything is clean. Her balcony has a view that's worth most of the rent alone. She says she loves to sit there, loves to look at it, the Empire State glowing grandly just across the water and all three bridges in the distance. It just reminds me of that summer in Greenpoint, and the feeling that the city is so close, but much too far away. I am glad to return to my snug Village street, with the City's ground safe beneath me.

Charles Bukowski came on the screen tonight, disgusting old pervert Bukowski with young women in his arms and dirty fingernails from too many cigarettes, he talks so much shit but then there's that moment. At the front of the stage, with those papers in his hands, and the words that come out make you nod your head out loud but weep a little inside. He says to keep the ember glowing, even through that job, even through doubt and rage, and one day even that little ember can spark a fire. The critics twist themselves inside out to infer meaning, paint allegory, but let them have their way, they can't change anything. His windshield has a giant crack down the middle. It's beginning to look like me. It reminds you.

You do not have to be good,
or right,
or beautiful,
at anything,

as long as you are amazing
with the Word.

Outside the Box

Put on your heels and sparkles, chimes a familiar voice, and the Lower East Side begins to glow. We toast to unknown adventures, to a Friday night in Manhattan. She says we live on the same street, and we describe stoops, steps, and curves of the ginkos to find our respective doors. Don't you know who lives there?! she says incredulously and lists the celebrities, but you do not care, it is your street now, you don't know how you could ever give it away to anyone else.

We skip the line at the door, velvet ropes parting and we sneak quickly upstairs to the boudoir. Appearances can be deceiving as naked women tease and play on stage, and a hostess wearing glasses twists in the drapes. The car goes to Brooklyn, you leave them in the street, it's such a familiar way home along Houston and you walk it like you know what you're doing. A Freedom Tower lights up in the distance, it is always there, at every corner, and you realize what a void the others left when they were no longer there. There's a sweet taste of pineapple on your lips, the last drink lingering as your feet grow tired under the full moon. Tomorrow you wake up in New York City, and the morning after, it is the best surprise you could wish for and you promise to never ask for anything else.

I keep saying I'm just going back to get it out of my system, you confide in her, but I'm beginning to see it's just a lie. You try to leave before you get left behind.

But your heart will bleed all over this island,
and there'll be nothing left to save, when you do.

On Mirrors

Eyes rest on your words, and they grow silent. You go to the top floor, to the back corner, to that sign that clearly says DO NOT SIT ON THE FLOOR and you sit down. It's that same book in your hand, you've been picking it up all week, the edges worn before you began but now the pages fold, too. You are too poor to buy it, you're reading it on layaway, one day you will bring it with you when you go. Big tears roll silently down your cheeks, but in that bookstore, on that soft carpet, you are safe. Seven years ago you sat in the exact same spot and let New York sink its teeth into your soft skin, nothing has changed.

I fall apart a hundred times a day, the pieces didn't magically weld together, we do not escape ourselves simply by running away. But all it takes is looking up Seventh avenue, to that stack of buildings in the distance, or the Empire State resting soundly beyond, ever present, ever watching, to make me breathe a little deeper, walk a little steadier. All it takes is remembering that I am here, now, and tomorrow as well, to make me sleep a little sounder at night.

When the pieces refuse to fit like they are supposed to, a puzzle board city to keep them from spilling into the void proves more valuable than first you knew.

Daffodil

The park is awash with Sunday afternoon perfection. Not a boat left to be rented, and the sunny side of the bridges are all selfies and bridal portraits, and look at that squirrel, how cute. She calls to tell of a tumultous Saturday too long in the making, and how sweet a Sunday morning when the company is right. I still wonder what your voice sounds like on Sunday morning, I've forgotten even its late night timbre. Perhaps it is just as well. I can't hear the words without hearing something else now. Her eyes glitter when she speaks. Age makes us cautious, but we are all teenagers at heart. I want to tell him I'll break his knees if he hurts her. Perhaps there'll be time for it yet.

Crawl into the bookstore at 82nd and Broadway, the escalator is broken, it has that right smell of coffee and carpet, dysmal lighting, the upper west side always had too many people in it and I never liked the way they felt against my skin. In the far corner, find the book, I wasn't going to stay but I'll sit for a little bit, rows of chairs, my bare legs stick against the plastic, turn a page and disappear. It dug its way in, like a thorn, like barbed wire and suddenly I'm crying in the bookstore, in the flourescent tube lighting, in the far corner of the upper west side and a hundred people I'll never look in the eyes, it doesn't matter. Sometimes I fear we are too broken, that this gash was deeper than we could ever have imagined, and we'll never recover after all. He says I envy you being there so much and it angers me. People say this a hundred times over and never go, always dream, fold themselves into their fears and excuses and grow bitter at the News Feed in front of them. If my shell of a person can do it, so can you. I am only amazing.

I am only hollow on the inside.

The Ides

The teenage boy in the townhouse next door comes home, 3 am he must be drunk. He turns on the kitchen light, 11 foot ceilings, the light floods the courtyard and makes a strange play across the yellowing birch leaves outside my window. He empties the contents of a huge tub from the fridge on a plate, pours a glass of chocolate milk, turns the light off as he leaves the room. The courtyard blackens again, dark rustling silhouettes and angular black buildings tower against the clouded gray skies. Overcast, autumn, it's mild as a summer night, you didn't wear a jacket out and you were fine. They didn't want to leave you in the street but don't they know that short stairway under the street is familiar to you everywhere in the city, don't they know the steady rumbling of subway trains is your best lullaby home? The F train rolls slowly down its decline, first just a drop of light in the distance, then a sliver, then a steady beacon, don't they know it'll roll you straight to west 4th street and you can walk the rest of the way blindfolded, lord knows you've done it enough.

The city looks so still from back here when all the lights are off. Wailing cats are the only sound, even the sirens have gone home now. He asks you if it was all that you hoped and you don't know the right words for it was better than I could have dreamed. It's no different than before, nor are you. But that's the point.  

It was never broken.

There was nothing to fix. 

Shuttle

Turn a corner and a perfect reflection of the Chrysler building glitters in the glass skyscraper across the street; it is a postcard, it is a cliché of New Yorkness and you fall for it with no reservations. Let your heels click-clack across the late-night quiet main floor of Grand Central Station and feel like you own it. How much smaller it gets in real life. The other day I rode the 6 train past my stop, past the following stops; I rode it all the way to the end and crossed the rails to take the next one back up to where I was supposed to be going. Standing on that rocking train felt too much like home, and I never wanted it to end. I walk crooked ways home through the West Village mazes. There is a certain, golden yellow light that hits the autumn trees in the Village and makes the whole neighborhood a quiet magic.

And these streets smell, all the time they smell of garbage and bleach and subway sweat and misery. And it is impossibly expensive to live here, and just when you begin to relax this city will find a way to kick you in the face. And there will come a day, or two, or 50, when you will doubt if it is worth all the sacrifice to live here, and if you couldn't have a better life elsewhere, safer, calmer, more reasonable according to the checklist.

But perhaps that's what love is. That year after year, through compromise and sacrifice and questioning your own sanity for staying in, there comes a moment, where you look up, and everything bathes in that magic golden glow, and that feeling rushes through your chest like you just fell in love for the first time all over again and every doubt was worth the wait.

I doubted.
I did.
But I can't for the life of me
remember why
now.

Hudson and 10th

The sun sets in that ridiculous hue of pink, all overcast smog-filled over-saturated isn't-there-an-instagram-filter-just-like-this and it takes your breath away. Little beads of light trickle down Christopher Street as you turn the corner, because it's been too many years and your gut cannot navigate these crooked Village cross streets like it used to. You still find your way eventually. We get drunk on perfect margaritas and sit outside because hell if it isn't warm enough despite that storm that passed through last night, and he tells you stories of the West as you wonder of the marvel from whence you both came.

There was a moment today, when I walked home down Houston, and the people whirled around me like ignorant bees in the pursuit of their Dream, and the sunlight warmed just so against the skin, and the New York City Promises of Tomorrow played some made up ball game at the edge of the court only they could understand, and I crossed the street at the red light because I knew the cars would be coming just like that and it was fine, that every doubt that had crossed my mind was silenced. Every question mark and sad Stockholm evening staring at the radio tower in the distance and thinking what the hell am I doing this for receded into a quaint memory of the naive past. We went to that other bar, the one you loved and where he looked at you with smiles in his eyes so many years ago, and the Empire State Building lit up the corner of the park where you all sat with your deli lunch and unaccustomed heat flush before the map had connected in your mind, and it was all laughs as though nothing was out of the ordinary at all. I forget, so easily I forget, just a week in and this should all be new but it doesn't feel like it. This city made you. This city is every cell in your dilapidated body, is every breath in your trembling mind, is every answer in your foully constructed illness.

It seems ridiculous in its simplicity, but isn't that always the way? When we find the answers, we realize we had them with us all along.

This city is the blood that courses through your veins. You have not been, without it.

And now you are, again.

Epic

She's a writer, the drunk voice calls at the end of the bar. We're so many bottles in, we're so many dollars in and who cares I'll look at the tab tomorrow. We chat up the gay boy whose partner works the bar; we sneak out the back door and saunter into the musical chairs singalong on Christopher. Good luck catching a cab on Seventh Avenue but you send them off in a yellow SUV before turning the West Village corner where you belong and the street is so short even at night.

Two and a half years, can you believe it? but no one can. I can't remember what happened in the in-between. You sway softly in the safe nook that is these streets, that is this city, that is this language, and by the end of the night are you not friends with everyon at the bar? The dog remembers you; he is old,  but he lies in the fold of your arm as though nothing had changed. The bartender passes through with the tip jar; I have an operation on Wednesday. She explains it's her birthday. We cannot help but laugh at it all. Weren't we best friends before the hiccup? Catch your breath and find nothing has changed.

The tiny room on Morton Street lies unchanged from your absence. You crawl in, brush your teeth, try not to wake anyone up despite the papier maché walls and tomorrow will be just as hot and humid again, it's a ruse. Your winter clothes lie untouched in their crowded closet space. You sleep a delicious, heavy sleep but without dreams. What dreams could you have?

You are here.

Slow Dance

From afar it looks like a fairytale.

They paint the scenes in movies, in magazines and war stories, they make it out to be a place for the wildly succesful, the impossibly beautiful. They make it the unrechable dream, and they put it in your head that perhaps you only imagined there was a place for you in it, and that you would fall off the edge if you stepped onto its land.

I walked up the avenues last night, the 9-5 crowds making waves around me and the afternoon still sweltering. Stepped quietly into the Park and climbed up onto those cliffs, the same as last time and the same as the time before that. Seven years I've been coming to this spot and it wrings my heart every time, I wanted to tell the people around me, as they Instagrammed their iced teas. The sun began to set over the West Side, little beams streaking through the buildings and all the skyscrapers had that certain, incandescent hum about them.

When the evening grew dark, but still with that Mediterranean humid heat and little beads of sweat made their way down my back in sheer surprise, I walked down Sixth avenue in a daze. Every street corner, every twist and turn into the West Village nook that is mine, was a familiar scene, was an unconscious move because I have done it a hundred times before. And yet every time I looked up, did I not lose my breath just a little, did my eyes not twinkle a little more than before?

They make you think this place is not for you, that there's no bother in coming. But they do not know how New York concrete under your steps make you a little more steady on your feet, how the scent of warm cigarette smoke and restaurant exhaust perfume in your lungs make your back a little straighter. They do not know how yellow cabs in the corner of your eyes and cop sirens in your window as you fall asleep make you a little calmer, a little safer in this life.

New York,
You may be a fairytale,
in their eyes.

But to me,
you will always be
just home.

On Magic

At the edge of the river lies an island that knows my name when I forget it myself.

For a moment, for a minute, I am whole.

Return on Investment

Fingers tremble at the weight of the bags. Nerves tremble at the Everything Else. You calculate hours, count minutes. A mistral wind blows through the canyon and ruffles the leaves, but didn't the summer sun return at last? 

So tell me your plans, tell me your life, he says kindly. But to pour one's heart out to a bank branch manager and evaluate its weight in figures and coins; I shudder and paint another story entirely. My credit card expands and I think maybe it was a good one, after all. Pack it in with the rest of the loose ends and pray the bag will survive the journey. 

New York lies quiet in the distance, impossible to see or hear, and still

I know it's there, glittering with promise and whispers of dreams forgotten. If I calm my racing mind, for just a moment, don't I hear it calling, can't I feel it still move slowly in my veins? 

Four hours until liftoff. 

New York, honey, 

I'm coming for you. 

Weathered

The heavy cover of clouds lifts slowly, reluctantly from the mountains. It leaves behind it the thinnest hint of snow, draped across the peaks and misting into the slopes. By nightfall the valley lies pitch black under a sea of stars, the big dipper suddenly huge and looming, and the air turns freezing against unsuspecting skin.

I sat in silence for a few days, watched the passing of the clouds. For a few nights, the grinding teeth left an ache in my jaw, but little by little, it subsided. The apathetic stares and ignorant gut lingered for a bit, but somehow they began to turn. It rained and rained and I ground myself into a pulp, but when that sun returned did not everything look different, again?

In two days I return to New York. To the City I have loved, and lost, for years on end. I have struggled, I have feared, I have made this decision in the most crooked fashion, but here we are. There's only forward now.

After the snow storm, the sun returned, with its desert heat and dry promise of perpetual summer. The snow recedes. All is forgotten.

A sliver of red remains on my cheeks.

Where You Go

Close to midnight and the streets in the little town are empty. Monday night, family night, no one would be out, every street light is green until the mouth of the canyon. A half moon disappears behind looming mountain peaks; they are invisible in blackness, but I know they must be there because they always have been. A few miles in, when the few lights of the valley disappear, the ridges reappear, dark grey contours against a blacker sky, a loud silence that appears when the radio frequencies no longer can. I turn up the static, set my sights on the lights at the dam, and I push a little harder on the gas.

I saw in your words something that broke my heart and I cannot listen to them again, I'm sorry. I know the view; I've looked in through that window and I just don't think I can open it again. It may be better to swallow hard, order another beer, pretend the mistake won't be made again.

Third time's a charm.

We don't know anything of what lies ahead, though.

Fort Union Blvd.

The days pass in a vacuum. Every morning a new sunrise over the mountains, each one different and I sit quiet in wonder and watch the morning mist rise, the hillsides turn auburn with approaching frost, the mountain peaks grow pink with sunlight. One quiet moment of solitude before the house wakes and the day begins. 

And so it is that I stroll the aisles of the SuperStore, inhaling the scent of America, and feeling utterly lost. Is this where I live, now? Is this what I am doing with my life and how is everyone else doing it so effortlessly? The desire to consume rises in me, to shop my way to happiness and fulfillment. I long for crafts and hot apple cider and fall foliage trips. My old college roommate expresses her grief and broken families, and I realize we are suddenly in a land where I can put words to those feelings myself. That I have lived the last two years in a language where I do not know how to say anything meaningful, so I simply haven't. 

America courses through my veins. Hesitantly, still, in the vacuum that is desert sunshine and Rocky Mountain conservatism, but it whispers to me that I can rest now, for a bit. It makes believe I have come home. 

In the Morning

Jet lagged, I wake up just in time to watch the full moon set behind the mountains in the west. The sky is still pitch black and filled with stars. Nights here are always star-lit, always a canvas of the universe, but they are breathtaking every time. She writes to tell me of her day, we could just as well be a few blocks apart as a thousand miles.

The coffee seeps in its French press; my father ground the beans last night so I wouldn't have to go without, we know the drill. You'll wake up at five, probably. When I was little and we had just returned from Australia that first time, we would hear one another stir in the middle if the dark January night and soon would all be up for a midnight breakfast of tea and toast. That memory soothes me year after year. We are travelers. I pull out the gallon jug of milk, so American in its weighty essence and scratch the rash on my arm. My body processes where my mind cannot. 

Burn it all to the ground. 

Start over. 

Valley

There's a strong wind in the night, but the air is desert warm and dry. The airport smelled like scented body sprays and home. A full moon guided us through the mountain pass like so many times before, while we spoke of the lost souls he's taken under his wing and decided to make whole. Nobody pays you to be a good professor. It is in his blood.

A voice from across the ocean says good morning. A text from the news says he is dead and it was a day for tumultuous change yesterday, wasn't it. Somewhere in the back of my mind says You are homeless now you have nothing but I am not ready to hear it yet. Soon, soon I will understand. 

My eyelids fight a losing battle. My eyes so heavy. I fall asleep before the song is even through. 

Transit

Welcome to Chicago, the voice booms across the speaker. It seems warm out, I sweat in my jacket and scarf and I didn't need all these clothes but they kept the weight out of my checked suitcase and that was worth it. I leave my sister at a California-bound gate, am suddenly alone after the social whirlwind of the last few days, avoid trying to see what I'm feeling. I don't want to know. 

I sit down at an empty gate. It fills slowly, turns into a LaGuardia wait; I look at the people around me and wonder if it is obvious they are going to New York. It is not. Everyone looks like America. 

Everything looks like home. 

Something new is coming now. I do not know what it will be or how my place in it will appear. All I know is that I have no choice but to roll with the punches. I chose the rolling stone, I will lie in the bed that I made. 

And it will be okay

Because it has to. 

Nerves.

The apartment has an echo to it, now. The floors turn the soles of my feet black from grime, but the shelves and walls are empty. The hallway is lined with the remains of a life, destined now for the recycling bin, mere morsels saved for the leap. One day remains. One day of removing any clues of my existence from this tiny corner, of removing myself from the embrace of those I have grown to love so terribly in these gut-wrenching Stockholm years. One day of closing the door softly behind me, only to open another behind which I don't know what lies. Third time is a charm. A dozen moves under my belt; my mother calls with envy in her voice over the delightful tickle of clearing out and packing up. We are addicts for the New.

In the stress of departure, in the sadness that builds in my chest for imminent farewells, I forget the adventure that lies ahead. I forget how close I am to glueing my broken heart back together again.

The vision leaves me panting on the floor, gasping for air, trying to hold on to something, anything, to keep from falling. This is no life. The money, the apartment, the stocked pantry and vacation plans. They don't mean anything to me. They let me sleep soundly at night, but I don't want to sleep.

I want to live.

A long-deserted corner of my soul begins to stir.
Prepare for whatever it is that lies ahead.

Tragedy

The birds sing a song entirely out of season; I wake up thinking its Spring. Quickly the countdown reappears in my head: three days to departure, three days before this all needs to be empty and clean and the merciless judgment of what goes and what stays behind has been finished. Every night is a struggle against my failing discipline; the bartender pours another drink despite my shaking head and we all giggle in the sweetness of separation anxiety. The tab when it finally comes ends at four dollars and still I stumble home through the street. The sentiment is not lost on me. These may be the last days we spend together like this, ever, you said, and the words have been punching me in the gut ever since. I got so used to going that I forgot what it meant to leave.

Perhaps if I wear myself down enough times,
one day I will move and not feel a thing.

Perhaps that is the sisyphean boulder I will forever hope to leave
at the top of the hill.

Pelikan

Let's pretend we'll see each other again before you go, and we don't have to say goodbye now, he says, and I play along. I hate the goodbyes. The street is empty, now, the bar has emptied out. We stay past closing, listen to the music no one would ever dare admit to loving, put our empty glasses at the end of the table, resign ourselves to the End.

No more Wednesday nights at Pelikan.

And all you can think is, the lights at the other side of the ocean must be terribly bright, to be worth such sad sacrifice before the leap.

And So Cold

Stockholm refuses to go down without a fight. The sun shines a little brighter in the early autumn winds, the water sparkles. We go for swims after work, the channel runs cool perhaps, but clear, untroubled. Yellow leaves lie in cobblestone gutters, like sprinkled jewels before the end. We cannot believe it is fall. She treats me to dinner and the Tuesday night lies silent, empty in the streets. No one would know everything is about to change.

I fell asleep on the lawn in front of the church today. This church that has seen me through my late nights, my misty eyes, my stumbling question marks as the streets wound in confusing twists through my innards, and now I slept like a baby at its feet. This city is safe, now, it fits neatly in my pocket and I can carry it with me, if I need to. The remaining days are few, but they are filled to the brim with sweet smiles and all the warmth that will fit in a suitcase. The drug of departure seeps through my veins, replenishes my parched skin.

It's impossible to deduce the winner of the duel, yet.

Carry Me Home

Is it okay if we come by in half an hour, instead? her voice says over the phone. And the day I had planned, of cleaning up my mother's bicycle in anticipation of its departure, of playing the piano until my fingers bled before I bid it goodbye, it slipped through my fingers as I rushed to pack the last of the books in a blue IKEA bag. I jumped quickly out of the waters yesterday, to greet the passing friends, I carried out my piano in a mad dash today, amidst invitations of coffee and polite conversations; it is no coincidence. I allow for no long goodbyes, I do not revel in the departure. After my aunt had driven off with my dearest possessions, to store them for unknown days and years far from my reach, the day lay like an open gash in the Indian summer sunshine. We took a long walk across the channel, fell into lunch with a baby in my arms, sat for hours and innumerable glasses of wine on the town square; the day was perfect. The neighbors passed by and we realized this was it.

I know I am saying my goodbyes. I know I am holding onto your company a little more desperately, a little more dearly, and perhaps you will grow tired of it before too long. But I am stocking up on your stories, I am etching the sound of your voice into the folds of my heart. A week from now, you will still have a life, you will have a morning coffee and silly text messages, you will still go to the bar and get too drunk for a weekday night. A week from now, the trees will be a little more yellow, but you will still remark how mild the season, how kind the sunshine. And the apartment at the top of the hill will be empty. I will be long gone.

I am glad this day turned out like nothing I had planned.

There is no planning
a goodbye
such as this.

June 4, 2009

journal excerpt:

I am mostly nauseous. Inexplicably nervous and terrified. So much at the precipice, at the final step before a giant leap and I see the jagged cliff and unending darkness in the jump. 

But I do jump. I do not fall. 

Tomorrow I move to New York. 
Tomorrow, years of dreaming and longing
reach their unimaginable end. 
Tomorrow I try to patch the Lack, 
to deny the Void,
to make my half whole. 
I know it will not satisfy me;
that is the whole point of the lack. 
But it doesn't matter. 

Tomorrow is a dream come true. 

the Grind

Like every hug is the last. Like we don't know if this is the one, will we remember the chill in the air, the soft hum of the street, the unspoken words that became our last. I walk across the park to the apartment at the top of the hill and I don't know how many more times I'll do it. The church is steady, lies firmly planted where it should and I steal another glance. Soon, this will all be over. It is dark now, the stars are out but you can't well see them for all the light noise. I don't know how many more times I'll walk those streets, how many more times we will laugh at the bar, how many more times the view over Stockholm town will take my breath away as I roll down the hill to work.

I want you to know that I saw you, that I see you still. I want you to know that I am not, without your smiling eyes in my mind.

That I would not be, if I didn't think we'd walk this street, again.

To Watch and Learn

Oh, I’m sailin’ away my own true love
I’m sailin’ away in the morning
Is there something I can send you from across the sea
From the place that I’ll be landing?

No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love
There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled
From across that lonesome ocean

Oh, but if I had the stars from the darkest night
And the diamonds from the deepest ocean
I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss
For that’s all I’m wishin’ to be ownin’

Oh, how can, how can you ask me again
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I want from you today
I would want again tomorrow

I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from her ship a-sailin’
Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again
It depends on how I’m a-feelin’

Well, if you, my love, must think that-a-way
I’m sure your mind is roamin’
I’m sure your heart is not with me
But with the country to where you’re goin’

What's Right

What's the first thing you'll do when you get to New York? she says, and the timing is impeccable, because the bartender knows how to play the song just as your skin tickles. I think of lugging those bags up the stairs at Morton Street. I think of an early morning walk through the Village, of drinks after work with faces I've missed, of sunset over the Hudson and a familiar voice in the subway tunnels. What's the second thing you'll do? she says, and all you can think of is how you can't stop smiling, and all you can answer is You know, live a life. 

There is too much, now, too many bags left to pack and too many tearful goodbyes. All you can think of is the pain of departure, the question marks amassing in your head. But no matter.

One day this will be a quaint memory of times loved and lost. One day this will be what you gave up to walk the streets that never stopped running through your heart strings.

I haven't told you yet 
but I'm gonna be with you. 

Count. Down.

Two weeks from today, I hear my own voice say, explaining with a smile to half-strangers the inner workings of my non-existent plans. Feel a blush at the nonsense I speak. In the apartment, a temporary life lies turned upside down, awaiting judgment. Return to the scene of the crime and feel my stomach turn. The lights are on, but I refuse to look them in the eye. Get drunk instead and sleep for days. Two weeks from today. The leaves at the edge of the tree outside my window have begun to turn yellow. The mornings are cold. My parents call and say they still need the AC in the afternoons.

I don't have time to tell you good-bye.

It's only my disease speaking. I sneak out when no one's looking.

The clinch in my jaw is back.

Nearly

He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion...

New York was his town, and it always would be.


 (Woody Allen, Manhattan)

On Cold Feet

Winter is coming, but you wouldn't know it from the sweat dripping down my back as I pedal past the herds and up the hill. Winter is coming, but you wouldn't know it from the blue skied mornings or outdoor concerts in the park. It's only there, just before dawn, when it is still dark and the last of the street cleaners are out, when my feet stick out from under the covers and the windows are open, it's only in the chill over the soles of my feet that I feel it.

The great Tired creeps up on me. I sleep, for hours and hours on end, I cannot get up even to brush my teeth and too soon it is morning. Still it is not enough. Friday night texts roll in and I roll over, hugging the security of quiet and darkness, reeling from the thoughts and questions that remain without.

It's so close now, I can smell it.

Pull your toes in.

Prepare for the chill.

31

So when you read this, I hope you are there; I hope you are Home... I hope this coming year, you love the hell out of what's good in Stockholm, but do not fear the leap. That you love your friends, but trust they will be there even when you leave. That you find money, and purpose, and means, and that you go back to New York... You never succeeded at following paved paths, but did you ever want to? This life is yours, and you can never live it any other way than that which you do. It is perfect. 

I hope you travel. I hope you sing. I hope you meet new, mad people and say Yes, when asked. I hope you remember that age is just Life, and you are still the Mad Soul full of passion and fireworks you always were. I hope you embrace your Darkness, your desperate need for solitude; they are You... Right now, you are only 2 things: New York and the word. They are your constant companions, they are your roots. 

And your friends, any potential man, or House, or job, or Routine, they are lovely, they keep you alive, breathing, they are indispensible. But Cajsa, and I cannot not say this, when you read this, I only hope this: that you went to New York, that you wrote,
and that you loved every single moment. 

I pray you smile when you read this. 
I wish you have a Happy Birthday.

One

A ticket lies in my inbox. Waiting, biding its time, singing its sweet siren songs. We sat in their courtyard drinking Coke and speaking of jazz clubs, and the spark in his eye ignited my veins. There is a certain hum in unexpected evenings, there is a reminder of Life to live and mad souls to bring along for the ride. 

The Escape key on my computer has fallen off. 

I wore it down. I regretted nothing. 

Itinerary

How easy it is, once you step off the ledge. How effortless to abandon an entire life and know nothing of the ground on which you land. But now you have committed to the fall. You have booked the ticket, paid your dues. There is a date, and a time, for your leap, there are official documents and baggage limitations and in the end it doesn't mean a thing.

Because once the ticket was finally booked, all that mattered was the little ember of mad joy that began to smolder in my chest. The stinging sensation of a million sleeping cells beginning to wake, to hear the call of adventure and stretch their senses towards it. Because once that ticket was in my hand, did I not feel, again, that I was alive? 

The windows are wide open tonight. A half moon begins its late August path above the houses; it shines straight at me now. Every moment is suddenly precious, suddenly so obviously fleeting. It is as it always was:

Life
is best lived
mid-air.

Raze

It ends as it begins. An empty canvas of a life, washed clean of all that came before and ready to start anew. I tear the winding plants from around the windows. For the first time in months I can look out, but sills are barren, the corners. Perhaps that is the price we pay. The canvas looks a little tarnished, around the edges.

Behind me, I know it, you don't have to ask me to look, are nothing but bridges burning. I can feel their hot sting on my cheeks. You leave with no goodbye and I don't think we will ever have what we did. I don't miss it. Or at least I won't. And I won't be here when you return.

This city is beginning to lose its shine. These streets are losing their promise. A nasty taste rises in my mouth, and I am ready to level the whole thing to the ground. Such is the nature of this disease, you don't have to remind me, I know full well the ghosts that chase me, the shadows that keep me running. But fuck it.

It's not life if you're not terrified. 

Cul de Sac

Apathetic eyes stare blankly in the mirror. I crawl out of my apartment on trembling legs and arrive sweating at the office hours too late. Your face is green, a colleague snickers, and my stomach turns. There is a cramp in my leg that will not go away, a mauling ache in the back of my skull. Outside, late summer is still warm, the sky filled with those fluffy clouds that look so great in photographs. They ask questions and I still have no answers. I still haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing.

It doesn't help to run to the ends of the earth, she writes. You never can outrun yourself.

But I ran and ran this narrow street; I knew it was bound to curve into a dead end and I thought when it inevitably reared its ugly face I'd be stuck, forced to backtrack down so many tragic nights of unknown fog and end up no better than at the beginning. Yet when the dead end came, it ended not so much in a brick wall as in a steep dropoff with blue skies above. Just one more step and you're off the edge. Irrevocable, yes.

But I am free.

Novel

There was a time when this was all new
and we had all the time in the world. 
I wish you would hurry.

Words return when the bar opens again for the fall season. The bartender plays that song and you want to go home. I have only the Word and it has to carry me to the ends of the earth. There is no other way.

I know what you smell like
in the morning

It's over.

Infect

Words evade me. It occurs to me that perhaps feelings do, too. I pass out exhausted every night but numb, gratefully numb, the days will pass and the life and you will not have had to feel a thing. She passed in her sleep, they say, it was perfectly painless. If it does not hurt to die, you weren't really alive when it happened. The August night lies dark outside, it snuck up on us when no one noticed even as the days remain warm, sweltering. I hear your voice but it's not the same now; we look the other way and wonder what happened. Traffic is a bitch every morning, a lethargic snake draped around the island bypass. I laugh in the face of every sad, gray commuter I pass on my bike, I am free.

For years, I've said that New York is the drug I cannot quit, is the urge of which I never rid myself, but perhaps it is the other way around. I go back, again, again, I rub myself against its concrete and fill my reserves with its madness, that one day I can no longer run out. One day, New York will be sufficiently etched into every fiber of my being, every cell in my skin, every vein in my limbs, that no matter where I go or who I am, it will remain in me. That no matter what I do, I own a little piece of that place that can never be taken from me, again.

We will never be whole, you know.

But we can fill in the cracks with magic,
and be better off than before.

The Other Side

The days pass, I do not write. I can not explain it. People wear jackets in the streets now; it gets hard to bike home in the evenings without the lights on. I go to work with my head safely on my shoulders but oh how the nights fall apart. My apartment takes on the air of cardboard box underneath the bridge, all piles and hoarded potential.

The Escape key on my computer keyboard has fallen off.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

Facing the Courtyard

The subletter fell through, she says.
If you want your old room back,
it's yours.
 
The days count down quickly.
But the stars align
at a speed
all their own.

Forecast

The sea was perfectly still, a silken peach lull over the slow currents drifting to shore. We looked at the sunset: vast, quiet, setting fire to the cliffs across the water. August is impossibly beautiful like that. What is it about summer, she said as her baby fell asleep in my arms, that makes it so happy and sad at the same time? Her husband stared cynically at the last returning sailboats and said, That is the essence of what it is to live where we do. In the life of summer lies the promise of approaching death. It is the same, every year.

I went to bed alone in the dark cabin, the sea black and ominous outside. The peaceful quiet suddenly more a sign of abandonment than of urban escape. I slept a heavy sleep, again, filled with strange dreams impossible to interpret. Come morning, the sky had clouded over, meeting the ocean in a pale shade of grey. I pace impatiently, wait for impending rain.

Wait for the summer to die.

Vindö, Revisited

My grandfather turns 90. He is old, he takes innumerable naps, we have to speak twice as loud and half as fast, but damn if he doesn't love that akvavit after lunch. We crowd into my aunt's house in the country, first cousins once removed, second cousins, great-aunts and in-laws, an invasion of flies and unlimited cookies. By nightfall, the secret smokers sneak onto the back porch. I hear untold stories of my father's youth, where we would stand on the balcony and spit on the passers-by, and jump on the slide so the crystal chandeliers rattled on the neighbor's ceiling. Detect similarities in our faces, trace lineage through a curvature of the hip, a crinkle in the eye. My parents call from across the oceans and lament their absence, but they spent most of my youth avoiding these things. When the devil grows old, he finds religion. My cousin in New York Skypes in and everyone crowds around the screen to make jokes and express longing. There was a low marking on the doorpost, 1987; how we have grown since then, and still we are the same. She feels closer now than ever.

We repack our bags, escape to the archipelago. I lie for two full days on a cliff and watch my skin turn brown. Live in a swimsuit and try not to get webbed feet. Write lists and count down days. What am I doing with my life and should I be doing it differently. I read small press anthologies and see nothing but dystopic futures painted on science fiction-esque backdrops. To be a good writer you must be an avid reader. I fall asleep with the pages plastered to my cheek. Sunscreen glue.

Thunder rumbles in the distance.

I am not afraid.

Journal Excerpt

...And in the midst of all the uncertainty, in all the things I adore about my life in Stockholm, I long for New York so my heart aches. Like if I just come home, maybe Everything won't be okay, but at least I'll know the soles of my feet are burning.

On Love

It's not an act,
an illusion,
a mere infatuation of youth
(to be snickered at later,
and how young we were).
It's not that I want to be the one to leave,
that my pride demands I own these terms,
make these rules.

Because I do  not.

It is that you have been with me for so many years and never faltered. Even in my grittiest slums I knew who you were, and you reminded me who I was when I couldn't remember, myself. It is that while nostalgia of the things we were is beautiful, it is not why I love you. Rather, I want only more years of new adventures, of new paths, of knowing you better still. It is that with you, I am me, and it seems I did not even know that person until we met. It is that the coffee tastes better in your presence, the air smells realer, the life makes more sense. It is that when I run, you remain.

I want to be near you, until we are out of things to teach each other. I want our parting to be one of satisfaction, of there was nothing more to give, of I cannot love you like that anymore and then I want to be done. I want my life to be indistinguishable from yours.

That is all.

On Sweat

The rain arrives at last, a great loud torrent, it beats the dusty land. The lilac leaves had begun to wilt, people's eyes looked glazed over by the heat. The rain arrives, but the tropical heat remains. The sun sets in fire, in tangerine, but the forecast says floods are yet to come. I had to leave the water, at last, the rain drops pelted the waves so I could not keep my eyes open, and then there was that bit about being in water during lightning. I can't remember what the thing was.

My neighbor across the street returns. He sits on the balcony and gazes into nothing. They light the apartment in a green glow. Perhaps vacation is over.

The only secret to success is working like mad and fighting like hell. After my shift, my body is exhausted, I nap, I sweat, I try to recover before another day begins again. The curse of the working class, to which I apparently aspired. There is no success to be had. But on our way home from the bar the other night we dove into the channel, swam quietly through dark, cool waters as the party continued in the old factory on the other shore. We considered crossing, stepping out naked and joining the party. It was warm enough. Who would have noticed? Instead I stood on the subway with dripping hair and stained lips. But I was happy.

Summer sinks in, despite my toil, despite my inability to squeeze the minutes out of each day, it reaches in to where I can not escape and swathes me in sticky, warm air. Lines of varying color begin to form on my skin. A swimsuit lies packed in my everyday bag.

We cannot think of our mortality, always.

1:17 a.m.

The apartment is empty again, one day she's booked the ticket and pretend vacation is over. You return to your normal habits, leave dishes in the sink, forget to enjoy the heat wave that spreads over the city like a welcome plague, disabling the citizens from anything but basking. One night I fell asleep at six p.m. and didn't get up until the alarm rang the next morning; my every muscle was tired. I closed my eyes and felt the weariness pulsate in me, vibrate through the cells and I didn't know one body part from another. Summer is glorious.

The job is beautiful but exhausting, reminds me what it keeps me from doing. Creative spark plugs lie scattered around the apartment, burnt up and to no good. I am not ready to succumb. Give up, give in. This is not what I'm meant to be doing. The clock ticks quickly, races against the speed of my heart beats. He says we have to meet up before I go, because when I return you'll be long gone and I didn't realize the goodbyes could come so soon.

My father calls in the middle of the night. I have painted scenarios of many deaths before I hear the message of his voice from inside a pocket seam. My eyes wide awake, I see it: We have this now. There is nothing else to count on.

I don't want to sleep, anymore.

To Get

He looks like your old roommate in Greenpoint, that summer in Brooklyn when the streets steamed, but he left with the girl with the curly hair and you wished your locks had that corkscrew in them. You tell people you are going, you fake it till you make it but isn't that the way you made it happen last time and maybe the time before that as well. It is how you always go. You never have a proper plan; maybe you land with your knees bleeding but hell if you don't brush your shoulders and walk that road after all.

The light returns to the island in the city, demure sunrise on the church at the top of the hill as you set your alarm and tell him to go home. You fear you missed the party, you fear you'll miss the morning, there is an ache in your belly after breakfast or sunshine, you can't tell the difference, but the curl in his hair makes you think there is summer left to be had. How quickly the days pass. Soon will come fall.

You will stand.

Vindö

There was a different scent in the air this week, in the bicycle commute to work. The streets empty, the city in vacation, the few faces at the office tan with spare moments spent in the sun but that wasn't it. I just felt it in my lungs one night; it's been decided. And all the Swedish summer sunshine in the world could not change my heart: it is time to go home. 

All I see are steaming streets cooling with oncoming September winds, are the return of fall Mondays and don't wear white after Labor Day, normalcy returns to the city. All I see are my dreams, long slumbering, begin to take shape. 

We sat on the veranda, slow July sunset stretching across the isles and basking the pines in peach glows and birdsong, a long day's swim behind us, the brackish water staining my locks with salt and steam. I repeated again how breathtaking, how near Heaven, this moment, the one before, the many to come, but inside I knew. I had decided. 

Come fall, and dark nights, come terrifying winter and hopeless despair, I will be long gone. Once decided, how true the sentences sound. I can't plan for that in September. I won't be here then. 

You think I only play pretend. 

The days count down. You wait and see. 

Regina

I'm the hero of this story

I don't need 

To be 

saved. 

102,2

It's the most beautiful weekend of the year. Bright sunlight from early dawn to late at night, warm breezes, glittering water. My newsfeed spills over with pictures of children with strawberries, feet on cliffs, barbecues and boats and a hundred friends gathered at last, while I lie writhing in fevered restlessness, unable to leave my bed. Days and nights swim into each other; I wake up with clothes clinging to my sweaty skin, only to fall asleep shivering just as the sun rises over the trees. I pull the blinds, close my browser, we make jokes but it isn't funny at all, summer slips through my fingers and I am powerless to grasp at it. I cannot even cross the apartment without feeling faint. My innards twist around themselves and wring every last ounce of energy out of me. I am too tired to read, too tired to write. There is no space for anxiety or great revolutions of the heart.

But in the still moments, when there is just enough rustle in the trees to cool the air that sweeps in my window, when there is just enough silence in the street outside that the feeble voice inside my head may be heard, despite the rushing sounds of dehydrated blood past my temples, then I see it so clear.

There is not much time, but there is no stress. There are many questions, but already so many answers. Come fall, it is time for me not to be here anymore. I long now. The darker evenings do not scare me so much. There is a place where the streets never sleep, where the buildings always glitter. There is a place where the darkness cannot reach me.

So I am not scared.

You Were Born

Stockholm was warm when I arrived, a gentle afternoon sun and I peeled the layers off my body, grateful for homecoming and summer and life. The subway was unusually quiet for rush hour, the city already sneaking into vacation mode and no one gets anything done at the office anyway. I hurried to the South Island, couldn't even stop to drop my bags, pick up presents. The elevator creaked quietly as it made its way down, lifted back up, I stood fidgeting at the door.

You were just waking up when I came in, scrunching your face and sneezing at the bright summer light. You have your father's face, but it's too soon to tell really; your tiny fingers crinkled around mine but you held fast. One could hold your body in the palm of one's hand, and somehow you still owned the entire room. The air lay warm, thick around us and we moved in quiet moves, slow, everything draped in velvet airs as stories unraveled. You took your time. It's so strange, and yet it's as if it were never any other way. I tried to leave your side, to lift my hand from the curve of your back as you snuggled against me on the couch but I couldn't. I tried to speak of trips and summers, tried to care about whatever I had seen and where I had been but your breaths lifted and sank and trembled in your tiny body and I forgot my train of thought. Your parents looked at you, their tired eyes filled with stars. You do not know it yet but you are a miracle.

You do not know it, yet. But from this day on, I will do anything it takes to make you.

GBG

The city remains. It is rainy as ever, the wind cold and unforgiving but the faces are kind. The dialect sings through the crowds and their unpretentious clothes. My grandmother retells the same stories, the only ones seared into her memory that remain now, and I smile before the punch line because I know it too well not to. My friends realize they have lived in this same apartment five years, and me six, and I don't know where the years went. Weren't we just climbing those stairs with boxes and were all so hung over. 

Coming to this city used to feel so much like coming home. Like regardless my lost wanderings, this was a place where I had placed my trust and could sleep soundly. I've conquered new cities since then, grown and learned and I sleep pretty good in the apartment at the top of the hill now, too, I long for it even. 

But it occurred to me on the tram yesterday, crossing the bridge and seeing the little working class harbor town spread quietly over the hills, that the more places I conquer, adore, make my home, the more homeless I am in the end. 

Home becomes a watered-down notion I no longer have any chance to own. I grasp at straws, lose my footing. Sleep a restless sleep and wake up lost. 

On hospitals

The corridors were a maze; hurried people in scrubs ushered us deeper and deeper into the unseen bowels of the London Royal Hospital emergency room. Injury victims waiting room, and she was offended because she wasn't even injured. A young boy sat across from us. When they told him he'd broken his arm, he cried, and his friend had no sympathy to offer. Another drunken fight. The halls were full of them. 

By the time we left the hospital, she sun began to rise over London Town. It spread a pink sheen over St Paul's dome, glittered in the skyscrapers and dusted the dirty streets with a quiet calm. We sat at the front of a double decker and it felt like the entire city lay at our feet. It was perhaps the greatest moment yet, and the bus driver didn't charge us fare. 

There's a picture in my inbox, with other hospital sheets, a hundred times I've seen it already. A small baby lies in his mother's arms, a tiny hand clutching at reality and clothes he must wait to grow into. He looks like his father. I saw it at that last pub, right before the taxicab and the hospital turmoil, and I cried in the dim lights at the wooden table, overwhelmed with gratitude and wonder. He lives now, he exists now, he is here. He doesn't know it yet, but he is my family. 

I loved him before I knew how. 

Crouch End

Already the voice of the bus driver sent a familiar ease down my spine. She spoke of seat belts and arrival times at the airport as she eased us out of the sunny Stockholm afternoon. In my book, the narrator moved with ease to Italy, drank cool white wine in the Capri sun and had passionate rows with her lover, and Stockholm was bustling with summer fever. Adventure tickled my senses, stirred the blond hairs on my skin, and as the plane lifted above the clouds, to that vast landscape of billowing white cotton balls and dreamy oceans in the sky, I knew again it was a drug I will never quit. 

London is rainy, dark, quiet in the middle if the night, save for drunk kids walking barefoot and we sat on the bottom deck of the bus. The air smells of giant English roses and elder flowers; I look the wrong direction to cross the street every time. The city lies quiet, like a mysterious treasure waiting to be discovered, like a blank sheet of paper waiting to be mapped and for this short moment, everything is yet to come. The apartment is quiet; I sleep like I am right where I belong. 

and Pearls

Walk toward the sunrise, a voice inside my head said. Put one foot in front of the other. For a few minutes, I was convinced it was impossible. The Monday night bars were closing, except the little cave from which I stumbled, leaving a half-drunk glass and a row of snickering faces. It seemed an exit in the nick of time, but I threw up my entire evening when I got home, anyways.

Tuesday morning sunshine made my skin dissolve, tremble like heat waves on Texas roads, and entering my boss's office took all my strength. We have a position for you, she says, and at once the walls are swimming again, the rows of neatly stacked paper. But I think I'm going to New York, I say, and somehow I believe the words, now. The job offers beckon, the building of a future arises around me, how hard it is to walk away.

How much more precious the gem for which you do.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Pick seven different kinds of flowers, put them under your pillow. The person you dream of will be your betrothed. 

The midsummer night's tale is clear, the rules dictated from days of old. The party was over long before sunrise but birds were already singing in the forest beyond, as I stepped into the meadow to find my treasure. The rain had subsided, our bathing suits dripping from midnight swims, and I picked the tiny flowers with care, unsure of their purpose. One day this will all be a quaint story from our youth and who will know the difference. Ring around her finger, she asks me now the plan, and all I know is once autumn comes, I have to go. 

This season will pass, as it always does. The days will grow shorter, and you already have Someone Else. Our only constant is our eyes in the mirror, the city  that carries on even when you are not there. There is comfort in that which is reliable. I'm a sucker for continuity, even though you'd never guess.

I place the flowers under my pillow. Pray I'll dream of your streets tonight.